Logan man caught during police sting given 1 year in jail for minor solicitation

LOGAN — A Logan man was sentenced to a year in jail after police caught him attempting to solicit minors on a chat app.

David Jonathan Elliott, 37, was arrested in August 2023 when Logan police detectives conducted an undercover operation to track down people sexually exploiting children through the internet.

Elliott was found to be posting in a group called "age gap relationships," according to charging documents.

"In my training and experience performing online undercover chats, users who make reference to age or age gaps in almost any capacity are commonly interested in minors/children," a Logan detective wrote in his arrest report.

The detectives messaged Elliott pretending to be different 13-year-old girls, and each detective received sexually explicit messages from Elliott, including him asking to meet up with them to perform sexual acts, whilst thinking they were teen girls, the affidavit states.

During a police interview after his arrest, Elliott admitted to sending explicit messages not only to the detectives but also to minors outside of the sting operation, according to charging documents. He was charged in 1st District Court with six counts of enticing a minor, a second-degree felony.

On March 12, his charges were amended to just one count of criminal solicitation of a minor, a second-degree felony. He was also charged with the same crime, but a third-degree felony, in a second, separate case.

On March 30, he pleaded no contest in both cases to criminal solicitation of a minor. In exchange for his pleas, prosecutors agreed to dismiss the original six charges, recommend no prison time, and request that the sentences in both cases be served concurrently.

"I did, under the circumstances as I believed them to be, solicit two separate minors to engage in conduct that would be felony offenses of state criminal law," Elliott said in his plea statement.

Elliott was sentenced Monday to one to 15 years in prison, but the prison term was suspended. Judge Spencer D. Walsh then sentenced him in both cases to concurrent terms of 365 days in jail, with credit for the 60 days he previously served, and three years of probation.

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